Trends in biometric verification technology ~ TricksMode

As digital scanning and observation technologies improve and refine in tandem with increasingly powerful data recognition algorithms, the formerly nascent science of biometric identification is becoming something that holds a lot of promise for the near future and beyond.
Already the biometric technology is appearing in our identification documents, personal computing machines and is becoming increasingly common in many security and policing related areas. Soon we?re going to see biometrics hold an even more important role in all of these areas while it expands into completely new territories.
That said, let?s first take a deeper look at what exactly biometrics means before going into some of the details behind its emerging trends.
An Overview of Biometrics
Biometrics is not, strictly speaking, a highly modern science. Although many of us associate the word itself with high tech gadgets and eye scanners, by definition, biometrics is simply the process of sorting distinct individual physical traits in people and using them to identify a specific person amongst others. Thus, biometrics also includes fingerprint analysis, which has been in use by police for nearly 200 years and even further back before that by civilizations dating back to the Babylonians.
However, if we take this basic definition as explained above and join it with modern analysis technology, we get a far more diverse range of modern biometric techniques that can and do analyze highly individual specific qualities such as: fingerprints, body heat signatures, eyes (retinas or irises), walking gait, facial characteristics, vein patterns in the arms, voice sound prints and, of course, DNA.
The range of human body characteristics that can be biometrically indexed is expanding daily, although some such as fingerprints, eye features and DNA signatures are far more commonly utilized than other more exotic biometric measurement parameters. Now let?s get down to the latest in biometric trends!
Trends in Personal Computing
Personal computing is an area where the science behind biometrics has made only really limited inroads. Laptops and home PCs are now being made (and have been on the market for several years now) that can grant access only after their registered owner passes their finger through a small scanning device. However, beyond this, additional development really hasn?t gone very far.
One part of the problem lies in the fact that the most easy to use biometrics technologies for personal computing devices, which involve fingerprint recognition and eye or face scans, simply aren?t reliable enough under the tough, dynamic conditions that most users would be working with them under. This problem has been made even worse by the proliferation of tablets and smart phones as consumer substitutes to the far more stationary PC or laptop. Both of these are going to be used on noisy streets, in the rain and under dirty conditions ?all of which can lead to some serious problems with effective biometric workability. To GIVE just one example of what we?re describing: early efforts by companies like Nokia to create fingerprint scanning capacity on the screens of their touch phones became seriously screwy any time an owner touched the screen if it was wet or if that persons finders were dirty.
So far, we?re still seeing stagnant development in personal device biometrics, but the near future is looking interesting as both screen and mobile device camera technology becomes sharper. News stories such as Apple Computer?s fairly recent purchase of Biometric technology company Authentec for just under $400 million dollars are indicating some serious interest in better bio security on the part of major tech product players.
Trends In Police Forensics
In the area of Police forensics, biometrics has made a major splash. While police have been using fingerprint records to track convicted felons since at least the early 19^th century, modern police agencies have taken this old process and dramatically modernized it through heavy digitization of both fingerprint scanning and fingerprint record keeping. This has made the prints of potential criminals more widely accessible to cops worldwide.
But things don?t stop there: Biometrics is quickly becoming a police officer?s best friend and many police organizations now also use DNA and even eye scanning technology as another method of identifying potential suspects and keeping them registered for future evidence accumulation.
Even immigration police and military organizations are getting in on the biometric tech trend by deploying hand held iris scanning machines to their personnel in situations where either undocumented illegal immigrants or captured, undocumented rebel soldiers are rounded up and need to be quickly ID?d for future reference.
Next Generation ID Documents
Finally we come to the most obvious area of massive, and?widespread biometric technology deployment ?civilian population identification. Governments always like to keep track of their citizens in ways that keep certain people from easily stealing and assuming someone else?s identity or from simply slipping through the cracks and being hard to ID.
This is where biometrics comes in and in numerous countries it?s being used for both cross border traveler security and for general identification of an entire citizen population.
An example of the former can be found in the joint U.S/Canada NEXUS program, which offers special speeded up border crossing procedures to American or Canadian citizens who opt for a biometric ID tracker in their passports after they have been vetted as having clean personal records.
With the latter biometric ID use, involving general in-country populations, we have an enormous example in the Indian Government?s UID (Universal Identification) program, which is aimed at creating a fully encoded biometric ID card for every single one of India?s 1.2 billion citizens. When completed in the next few years, this will be the single largest application of biometric technology in the World.
As you can see, biometrics is here to stay. The technology behind it still needs some tweaking and existing identification procedures are still too well entrenched to disappear any time soon but the long term trends are clearly showing that the future of ID is in this powerful and secure system of identifying people.

About Author:
Stephan Jukic is a freelance writer who generally covers a variety of subjects relating to the latest changes in white hat SEO, mobile technology, marketing tech and digital security. He also loves to read and write about location-free business, portable business management and finance. When not busy writing or consulting on technology and digital security, he spends his days enjoying life?s adventures either in Canada or Mexico, where he spends part of the year. Connect with Stephan on LinkedIn.

Source: http://www.tricksmode.com/2013/07/trends-in-biometric-verification.html

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